Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 20:23
To: PAUL DEVEREUX
From: Thomas Yaeger
Subject: The Mathematical Origins of the Megalithic Yard
Dear Paul,
Hi. You might be interested in the following blogpost, which looks at why the supposed 'megalithic yard' has the dimensions it has. It takes an entirely different approach to both Thom's surveys and Ruggles later efforts (not statistical analysis, which doesn't do much except expose the general parameters of something which might exist), and which avoids (to a large extent at least), the risk of selection bias. These seem to be the main complaints.
What I've done is to take an entirely new approach, which looks at the
megalithic yard as something which serves a function in the context of
megalithic structures, and which has a strict mathematical relation to what we
already know about these structures (the focus on whole numbers, the use of
pythagorean triangles in their construction, and the fact that they are often
deformed in various ways, in order to achieve commensuration between the sides
of the triangles and the circumference of the circles).
There is a view of reality buried in pythagoreanism, which emerges from the
mathematics. This is true both for the later Pythagoreanism of the sixth century
BCE, and for the earlier proto-pythagoreanism, since the mathematics are the
same, and the interests in the mathematics are essentially the same. That's
where the megalithic yard comes from, and I describe this in the post.
I'm afraid the text is as dense as in the paper I submitted to 'Time and
Mind' a couple of years ago (it is a tricky subject), but I've kept the
necessary mathematics to the bare minimum. It is just under 5k words, so you
will need about an hour to digest it.
....
The post is 'The Mathematical Origins of the Megalithic Yard', and is at:
https://t.co/BiLRKVq5O1
Hope you are well!
Best regards, Thomas Yaeger
No comments:
Post a Comment